Article to Book

The challenge

Digital article to book. With 3.677 million page views, this article was more than our most read piece of all time. It destroyed all previous metrics. We realized how poignant the topic was and so chose this as our first experiment of turning an article into a full book. Quickly. The topic was timely. We accelerated our typical publishing process from one year to four months.

And we needed a jacket image on that accelerated schedule. And because it was our first article to book experiment, we needed the sales reps on board with a cover design for a sales meeting. In days. Did I mention that we dropped this title into a book list that had already been sold? To be clear: all of this never happens. But we made it work.

The method

The design had to convey the politics of anger and voter manipulation. And yet that needed to be conveyed with respect. The working class was fractured, disenfranchised. In a word, distressed. So, I distressed the typeface itself to visually display their emotion. And an image of a screw was selected as a not-so-subtle double metaphor depicting a working class who felt put out and was responding in kind. I designed a unique, fast-tracked jacket. I partnered with the sales team to get them what they needed to make the sales.

The result

Success on many fronts. An article-to-book conversion in record time with a best-selling result. The triumph of the hardcover warranted a paperback re-issue the following year with a foreword by Mark Cuban.

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Contact me at stephanibf@gmail.com